IF the reader has rightly understood what I have already said on the
subject of literature in general, he will have no difficulty in understanding
that species of influence which a democratic social condition and democratic
institutions may exercise over language itself, which is the chief instrument
of thought.

American authors may truly be said to live rather in England than in
their own country, since they constantly study the English writers and
take them every day for their models. But it is not so with the bulk of
the population, which is more immediately subjected to the peculiar causes
acting upon the United States. It is not, then, to the written, but to
the spoken language that attention must be paid if we would detect the
changes which the idiom of an aristocratic people may undergo when it becomes
the language of a democracy.

Englishmen of education, and more competent judges than I can be of
the nicer shades of expression, have frequently assured me that the language
of the educated classes in the United States is notably different from
that of the educated classes in Great Britain. They complain, not only
that the Americans have brought into use a number of new words ( the difference
and the distance between the two countries might suffice to explain that
much), but that these new words are more especially taken from the jargon
of parties, the mechanical arts, or the language of trade. In addition
to this, they assert that old English words are often used by the Americans
in new acceptations; and lastly, that the inhabitants of the United States
frequently intermingle phraseology in the strangest manner, and sometimes
place words together which are always kept apart in the language of the
mother country. These remarks, which were made to me at various times by
persons who appeared to be worthy of credit, led me to reflect upon the
subject; and my reflections brought me, by theoretical reasoning, to the
same point at which my informants had arrived by practical observation.

In aristocracies language must naturally partake of that state of repose
in which everything remains. Few new words are coined because few new things
are made; and even if new things were made, they would be designated by
known words, whose meaning had been determined by tradition. If it happens
that the human mind bestirs itself at length or is roused by light breaking
in from without, the novel expressions that are introduced have a learned,
intellectual, and philosophical character, showing that they do not originate
in a democracy. After the fall of Constantinople had turned the tide of
science and letters towards the west, the French language was almost immediately
invaded by a multitude of new words, which all had Greek and Latin roots.
An erudite neologism then sprang up in France, which was confined to the
educated classes, and which produced no sensible effect, or at least a
very gradual one, upon the people.

All the nations of Europe successively exhibited the same change. Milton
alone introduced more than six hundred words into the English language,
almost all derived from the Latin, the Greek, or the Hebrew. The constant
agitation that prevails in a democratic community tends unceasingly, on
the contrary, to change the character of the language, as it does the aspect
of affairs. In the midst of this general stir and competition of minds,
many new ideas are formed, old ideas are lost, or reappear, or are subdivided
into an infinite variety of minor shades. The consequence is that many
words must fall into desuetude, and others must be brought into use.

Besides, democratic nations love change for its own sake, and this is
seen in their language as much as in their politics. Even when they have
no need to change words, they sometimes have the desire.

The genius of a democratic people is not only shown by the great number
of words they bring into use, but also by the nature of the ideas these
new words represent. Among such a people the majority lays down the law
in language as well as in everything else; its prevailing spirit is as
manifest in this as in other respects. But the majority is more engaged
in business than in study, in political and commercial interests than in
philosophical speculation or literary pursuits. Most of the words coined
or adopted for its use will bear the mark of these habits; they will mainly
serve to express the wants of business, the passions of party, or the details
of the public administration. In these departments the language will constantly
grow, while it will gradually lose ground in metaphysics and theology.

As to the source from which democratic nations are accustomed to derive
their new expressions and the manner in which they coin them, both may
easily be described. Men living in democratic countries know but little
of the language that was spoken at Athens or at Rome, and they do not care
to dive into the lore of antiquity to find the expression that they want.
If they sometimes have recourse to learned etymologies, vanity will induce
them to search for roots from the dead languages, but erudition does not
naturally furnish them its resources. The most ignorant, it sometimes happens,
will use them most. The eminently democratic desire to get above their
own sphere will often lead them to seek to dignify a vulgar profession
by a Greek or Latin name. The lower the calling is and the more remote
from learning, the more pompous and erudite is its appellation. Thus the
French rope-dancers have transformed themselves into acrobates and
funambules.

Having little knowledge of the dead languages, democratic nations are
apt to borrow words from living tongues, for they have constant mutual
intercourse, and the inhabitants of different countries imitate each other
the more readily as they grow more like each other every day.

But it is principally upon their own languages that democratic nations
attempt to make innovations. From time to time they resume and restore
to use forgotten expressions in their vocabulary, or they borrow from some
particular class of the community a term peculiar to it, which they introduce
with a figurative meaning into the language of daily life. Many expressions
which originally belonged to the technical language of a profession or
a party are thus drawn into general circulation.

The most common expedient employed by democratic nations to make an
innovation in language consists in giving an unwonted meaning to an expression
already in use. This method is very simple, prompt, and convenient; no
learning is required to use it correctly and ignorance itself rather facilitates
the practice; but that practice is most dangerous to the language. When
a democratic people double the meaning of a word in this way, they sometimes
render the meaning which it retains as ambiguous as that which it acquires.
An author begins by a slight deflection of a known expression from its
primitive meaning, and he adapts it, thus modified, as well as he can to
his subject. A second writer twists the sense of the expression in another
way; a third takes possession of it for another purpose; and as there is
no common appeal to the sentence of a permanent tribunal that may definitively
settle the meaning of the word, it remains in an unsettled condition. The
consequence is that writers hardly ever appear to dwell upon a single thought,
but they always seem to aim at a group of ideas, leaving the reader to
judge which of them has been hit.

This is a deplorable consequence of democracy. I had rather that the
language should be made hideous with words imported from the Chinese, the
Tatars, or the Hurons than that the meaning of a word in our own language
should become indeterminate. Harmony and uniformity are only secondary
beauties in composition: many of these things are conventional, and, strictly
speaking, it is possible to do without them; but without clear phraseology
there is no good language.

The principle of equality necessarily introduces several other changes
into language.

In aristocratic ages, when each nation tends to stand aloof from all
others and likes to have a physiognomy of its own, it often happens that
several communities which have a common origin become nevertheless strangers
to each other; so that, without ceasing to understand the same language,
they no longer all speak it in the same manner. In these ages each nation
is divided into a certain number of classes, which see but little of each
other and do not intermingle. Each of these classes contracts and invariably
retains habits of mind peculiar to itself and adopts by choice certain
terms which afterwards pass from generation to generation, like their estates.
The same idiom then comprises a language of the poor and a language of
the rich, a language of the commoner and a language of the nobility, a
learned language and a colloquial one. The deeper the divisions and the
more impassable the barriers of society become, the more must this be the
case. I would lay a wager that among the castes of India there are amazing
variations of language, and that there is almost as much difference between
the language of a pariah and that of a Brahmin as there is in their dress.

When, on the contrary, men, being no longer restrained by ranks, meet
on terms of constant intercourse, when castes are destroyed and the classes
of society are recruited from and intermixed with each other, all the words
of a language are mingled. Those which are unsuitable to the greater number
perish; the remainder form a common store, whence everyone chooses pretty
nearly at random. Almost all the different dialects that divided the idioms
of European nations are manifestly declining; there is no patois in the
New World, and it is disappearing every day from the old countries.

The influence of this revolution in social condition is as much felt
in style as it is in language. Not only does everyone use the same words,
but a habit springs up of using them without discrimination. The rules
which style had set up are almost abolished: the line ceases to be drawn
between expressions which seem by their very nature vulgar and others which
appear to be refined. Persons springing from different ranks of society
carry with them the terms and expressions they are accustomed to use into
whatever circumstances they may enter; thus the origin of words is lost
like the origin of individuals, and there is as much confusion in language
as there is in society.

I am aware that in the classification of words there are rules which
do not belong to one form of society any more than to another, but which
are derived from the nature of things. Some expressions and phrases are
vulgar because the ideas they are meant to express are low in themselves;
others are of a higher character because the objects they are intended
to designate are naturally lofty. No intermixture of ranks will ever efface
these differences. But the principle of equality cannot fail to root out
whatever is merely conventional and arbitrary in the forms of thought.
Perhaps the necessary classification that I have just pointed out will
always be less respected by a democratic people than by any other, because
among such a people there are no men who are permanently disposed, by education,
culture, and leisure, to study the natural laws of language and who cause
those laws to be respected by their own observance of them.

l shall not leave this topic without touching on a feature of democratic
languages that is, perhaps, more characteristic of them than any other.
It has already been shown that democratic nations have a taste and sometimes
a passion for general ideas, and that this arises from their peculiar merits
and defects. This liking for general ideas is displayed in democratic languages
by the continual use of generic terms or abstract expressions and by the
manner in which they are employed. This is the great merit and the great
imperfection of these languages.

Democratic nations are passionately addicted to generic terms and abstract
expressions because these modes of speech enlarge thought and assist the
operations of the mind by enabling it to include many objects in a small
compass. A democratic writer will be apt to speak of capacities in
the abstract for men of capacity and without specifying the objects to
which their capacity is applied; he will talk about actualities to
designate in one word the things passing before his eyes at the moment;
and, in French, he will comprehend under the term eventualites whatever
may happen in the universe, dating from the moment at which he speaks.
Democratic writers are perpetually coining abstract words of this kind,
in which they sublimate into further abstraction the abstract terms of
the language. Moreover, to render their mode of speech more succinct, they
personify the object of these abstract terms and make it act like a real
person. Thus they would say in French: La force des choses veut que
les capacites gouvernent.

I cannot better illustrate what I mean than by my own example. I have
frequently used the word equality in an absolute sense; nay, I have
personified equality in several places; thus I have said that equality
does such and such things or refrains from doing others. It may be affirmed
that the writers of the age of Louis XIV would not have spoken in this
manner; they would never have thought of using the word equality without
applying it to some particular thing; and they would rather have renounced
the term altogether than have consented to make it a living personage.

These abstract terms which abound in democratic languages, and which
are used on every occasion without attaching them to any particular fact,
enlarge and obscure the thoughts they are intended to convey; they render
the mode of speech more succinct and the idea contained in it less clear.
But with regard to language, democratic nations prefer obscurity to labor.

I do not know, indeed, whether this loose style has not some secret
charm for those who speak and write among these nations. As the men who
live there are frequently left to the efforts of their individual powers
of mind, they are almost always a prey to doubt; and as their situation
in life is forever changing, they are never held fast to any of their opinions
by the immobility of their fortunes. Men living in democratic countries,
then, are apt to entertain unsettled ideas, and they require loose expressions
to convey them. As they never know whether the idea they express today
will be appropriate to the new position they may occupy tomorrow, they
naturally acquire a liking for abstract terms. An abstract term is like
a box with a false bottom; you may put in it what ideas you please, and
take them out again without being observed.

Among all nations generic and abstract terms form the basis of language.
I do not, therefore, pretend that these terms are found only in democratic
languages; I say only that men have a special tendency in the ages of democracy
to multiply words of this kind, to take them always by themselves in their
most abstract acceptation, and to use them on all occasions, even when
the nature of the discourse does not require them.